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12-14-06
| A coronal mass ejection
(CME) hit the earth today and sparked a strong display of auroras that
reached all the way toward the middle states. I had originally set out around
8:30 to see if I could see anything yet. At that time, there was a very
faint band toward the northern hemisphere, but I couldn't make anything
out. I drove to a nice dark area out in the country and I could see them
alot better, but nothing like I was hoping. Well, apparently I missed the
strongest surge that occurred at approximately 7:30. I kick myself now for
missing that, but later on another nice surge shot pillars and waves all
over the horizon. I quickly pulled over to grab these although the telephone
wires were in my way. The wind was blowing extremely hard tonight and it
was almost impossible to keep the tripod still. I had to either shield it
with my body or I used the truck as a blocker. Anyway, I decided to just
write up a short summary instead of captioning every picture. There is also
presence of "Newton's Rings" in all of the photos. The nearly monochromatic light of the aurora oxygen line
at 557.7 nm makes it visible: it's caused by
reflections from the front & back surfaces of my UV filter alternately
canceling and reinforcing each other, depending on the path length through
the glass (which gets longer as the rays go off the central axis.) In
normal polychromatic light there's never enough coherence to see it. Oh
well. Next time the UV is coming off. Anyway, here they are: |
